The first layer of concrete (the screed) was easy to remove. The layer underneath that… not so much. The rebar made it even worse. It took an huge effort on everyone’s part to remove:

We had the breaker going, grinders going, the excavator going. And endless, ENDLESS wheelbarrows full of whatever we dug up.

We started day 2 looking like this:

Still aching from yesterday, but we pressed on! We finished the day looking like this:

Big smiles on our faces, now that it is done. The above picture doesn’t really show just how much work went into this project. We removed about 18 cubic meters from the floor – that’s going 300mm (12″) deep. If you’re not sure how much material that is….

…it’s about this much!

Enjoy the timelapse of day 2:

It was a lot of hard work, but hiring equipment is always fun. You get a sense of accomplishment of doing things yourself, we have a lot of new skills that we can take away from this project, and use in future work.

Again, we couldn’t have done this without our friends and family helping us out along the way, so, a big thank-you to all of them.

Taking down the wall had left a big hole in the ceiling. Part of it had gotten damaged through the upstairs bathroom leaking before we had moved into the property. Because there is a such a change in the room which would mean a lot of extra holes anyway, we decided to just bring it down, and board it up again after the changes have been made – after all, we have a plasterer coming in anyway!

Nearly halfway there!

It’s surprising how tired your arms get with them above your head all day!

We were on the fence about insulating the floor above, but having realised how clearly you can hear the through the floors with the plasterboard removed has shown us that we really should insulate – it’ll help stop draughts, but most importantly, insulate from sound.

Time for the fun part! As it isn’t a supporting wall (we checked!), it was a simple case of working through the wall from top to bottom. We re-wired the electrics so that we still have a functioning light in what was the dining room, and are able to still use the cooker.

Clearing it up was another story. It was a huge job, one of use had a trapped nerve for the past six months, so wasn’t able to do a lot to contribute. We are fortunate to have friends and family who were willing to help with the clear-up!

There were a few things that we needed to do before we could knock the wall down in between the kitchen and dining room (it’s not a supporting wall, don’t worry!).

First, we had to take the radiator off of the wall. We hadn’t done much plumbing before, and had never used a pipe freezing kit. We enjoy learning new skills, and try to put the time into learning them correctly – so, after we had brushed up a little bit on YouTube, we froze our heating pipes (first pic), then cut and capped the heating pipes that would go to that radiator.

Taking the radiator off of the wall was easy (look at that original wallpaper!). We turned off the valve at either end, cut the pipes, and simply lifted off of the wall. The rest of the pipework was all mounted to the wall (rather than buried within it), so was easy to remove.

The only other piece of preparation work was to seal the door between the dining room and the lounge – you can see this in the picture above. We taped around the door, fitted a thick plastic sheet, and then taped around that. Hopefully, that should keep the dust to a minimum!